Positioning Statement - ProductSmart

Positioning Statement V2

My project provides citizens with a framework to make good holistic purchasing decisions. The framework provides product awareness and choice to facilitate decisions that are beneficial for health, environment, and social welfare. It attempts to modernize purchasing decisions by educating shoppers with critical product information. It also encourages manufacturers to be transparent with their products on multiple levels.


Positioning Statement V3

My project provides citizens with a framework to make good holistic purchasing decisions. The framework provides product awareness and choice, allowing citizens to think about their products in terms of three crucial elements: personal health, environmental stewardship, and social welfare. These three elements allow citizens to view products holistically, like a stool with three legs. A stool needs all three legs in order to be stable. If a product is missing any one or more its legs, it is doing harm to citizen, environment, or worker. The framework attempts to modernize the system that people use to make their purchasing decisions.

It also encourages manufacturers to think about product design holistically using the three elements mentioned above. It provides specific goals for manufacturers to achieve in order to improve the footprint of any particular product. It holds manufacturers accountable and encourages them to be transparent with their products on multiple levels.


Positioning Statement V4

My project provides citizens with a framework to make good holistic purchasing decisions at a time that is increasingly being defined as an era of sustainability. Green is now mainstream and viewed as good for business by many progressive companies. Sustainability is changing our consumption landscape, but the status quo of take-make-waste will not be dethroned unless we take affirmative action.

My project helps citizens navigate products, in this emerging era, and make value based decisions in terms of three basic elements: protecting personal health, environmental stewardship, and social welfare. It provides product awareness and choice, challenging citizens to view their products in a broader, holistic context. It reframes the traditional purchasing decision mindset, based purely on price and performance, to include a value based angle. Products with high value will be elevated to a status of high authenticity. Authenticity is increasingly becoming a quality as coveted as price and performance. My project attempts to modernize the system that people use to make their purchasing decisions to facilitate actions that follow the spirit of the sustainable era.

It also encourages manufacturers to think about product design holistically using the three elements mentioned above. It ties in directly with the idea of value branding and corporate responsibility. It provides specific goals for manufacturers to achieve in order to improve the footprint of any particular product. It holds manufacturers accountable and encourages them to be transparent with their products on multiple levels. Many companies are already embracing transparency since it is directly link to how citizens view a company’s/products authenticity level. Companies call this corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Removed the stool metaphor – replaced with the authenticity concept
These three elements allow citizens to view products holistically, like a stool with three legs. A stool needs all three legs in order to be stable. If a product is missing any one or more its legs, it is doing harm to citizen, environment, or worker.



Positioning Statement V5

Make citizens product smart. :)

Workback Schedule

V1 of my workback schedule.

Research: Target Audience (cont'd)

De-Motivators


Winning Combo


Easy Accepted Tangibles - spring boards


Basic Purchasing Decisions


Product Lifecycle (from a consumer's perspective)

Research: Products and Companies

Place holder.

Food and Household
Clorox Greenworks
Khalis Foods
Colgate
Spuds

Reseach: Target Audience

Typical Good Earth Citizen
- does the small things already
- uses cfls, canvas grocery bags
- bikes/car pools/transit/walks
- purchases energy efficient and recyclable products
- would like to educate kids with how to live with our environment

What does being Green Mean to a Citizen?
- no right answer, it varies, nobody sees green the same way
- how do they make choices wrt to sustainability, recycling, product lifecycle?
- environmental issues usually not a standalone factor for purchasing a product, like brand and price, but they can act as tipping points
- choice is key
- decisions are based on the rational and emotional
- opportunity lies in appealing to the rational side of citizens
- people are inundated with green messages, some of it green washing
- complicated to navigate messaging and make good decisions that fit our lives

Continuum ColorBlind Study
- Wonderful study conducted by a progressive design firm here
- Ethnographic interviews attempt to glean insight into behavioral and purchasing decisions in relation to "green" and "sustainable"
- interviewed over 7000 people online and in person
- 18-60 yrs old
- income 50k to 104k, USA

Key Findings from ColorBlind Study by Continuum
1. people care more about their immediate world, people in their lives, family and friends
2. they make choices to protect and sustain them
3. good companies will link green offerings with personal benefits
4. environment is abstract to many (forest, beach), not seen as the everyday
5. tangible actions, ones where consumers can see and control the results are embraced (ie. recycling, energy, water conservation)
6. environmental choices feel good, people want to make the right choice.
7. ideals are not always consistent with action at home
8. being green and buying green don't necessarily go hand in hand - lower income earners usually have a small footprint just because they consume less
9. it's not a black and white issue, multidimensional - need to speak in a variety of relevant ways
10. messaging more effective when practical (rational) more so than aspirational
11. consumers abhor waste, they value conservation not so much because its green but because it's frugal

Motivations (or lack of)
1. inconvenience
2. cost
3. confusion
=> Companies that develop green messaging that reduces these factors will benefit.

Research: Visualization

Coke Studios

Research: Personal Tools

Green Coupons

Green Guide

Placeholder

Research: Labels

Functional Nutrition Labels

Global Ecolabelling Network

Thesis Due Today

On my way to get my thesis printed out today I noticed

- someone giving away a free pizza
- a whistling octopus charging $4 per song
- high security at Save On Foods

Time to start using the blog regularly again.

Granville Deforested

Recently the trees along Granville St. we chopped in an effort to "beautify" the street in preparation for the 2010 games. It made me feel sad to see the trees cut down for what seems a cosmetic whim.



Later that day I dropped by Capers in Kits and noticed an "eco friendly" toilet paper roll by a company named Seventh Heaven. The toilet paper is made out of 100% recycled paper. It also stated that many toilet paper companies continue to chop down virgin forests to produce toilet paper. Here's what it said:

If every household in the US replaced just one roll of virgin fiber bathroom tissue with 100% recycled ones, we could save:
-469000 trees
-1.2 million cubic feet of landfill space, equal to 1700 full garbage trucks
-169million gallons of water, a year's supply for 1300 families of four

Wow!

I later looked up more info on the web and found that one of the biggest toilet paper producers is also one of the naughtiest. These guys chop down virgin forest... so that we can wipe ourselves? Seems crazy! So here's the deal. If 1 toilet paper roll per person in the US represents 469000 trees (about the size of Stanley Park), and the average roll lasts 5 days, then over 2 million trees a week are chopped down a week and flushed down the toilet. Unbelievably wasteful!

Thesis Thought: Product Story

"Human existence is the process not only of creating something but also of simultaneously causing the depletion of something. Depletion exists with creation and creation with depletion."
- Kenya Hara

Consumer society is a big issue these days. The creation of the STUFF that we buy depletes our planet's resources. Our rate of consumption is a problem that many people now acknowledge. There is a cycle, a story, that we need to understand to solve the problem.

Desire => Creation => Depletion

Understanding desire and the creation process is key. Have to update this later...

Thesis Thought: Collaborative Magazine

The internet is a swirling mass of human interests. Can we harness the creative energy and focus it on interesting projects? Open Source software has accomplished this with Linux. As good as the internet is, it still lives in a virtual space. Can we take the best aspects of the web and incorporate it into a physical space, or project, or both?

The web has done a great job transcending space but in some cases has it done too good a job? Have we foregone physical spaces and objects for virtual ones? Maybe I'm not being that clear... yet. :)

Above: A collecting some general thoughts about a collaborative magazine.

Below: Clarifying and organizing the above scribbles.

A simple list of topics floating around in my mind

I find that it's much more comfortable to keep on scribbling down notes on a page with a pen than to type up a summary of what I scribbled! Why is that? Before typing my summary, I constantly had a nagging feeling that I did not have enough topics. I felt that I had only a handful of ideas.

Now that it's on the page, I can easily see that there are 21 thoughts. They're not all stellar ideas, but I now have a sense of comfort that they've been organized for future reference. I feel free to either develop some of the ideas or to continue thinking about new ideas.

There's a lot to be said for taking some time to collect, clarify, and organize clumps of information as they develop.

Time for action

 

Ok, I think I've spent more than enough time viewing the project schedule and design process from 20000 ft. Time for action!

PS: Mr. C. I didn't know you had dandruff. Time for some Head and Shoulders!

Phase 1 Funnel

 

This mini funnel represents Phase 1 tasks. 

Reflecting on Design Funnels

 

The above view was introduced to me by Tak. It's originally from Bill Buxton's Sketching User Interfaces. I like the linear perspective of this model since it purposefully shows verticle and lateral thinking in motion.

Reflecting upon the IDEO's Design Process

 

I appropriated the above design process from Tim Brown of IDEO to match with our 4 phase project. I like how this view allows for freedom of movement.

Reflecting on the Phases

Wow, after working on the basic project schedules and action lists I feel a bit disconnected from the creative process. I feel like my brain has suddenly shifted into "management mode."

That's ok for now. I need to determine the high level perspective for the project. 12 weeks broken up into 4 phases can be roughly interpreted as,

Phase 1: Design proposal & Research will conclude with a final thesis report and presentation.

Phase 2: Concept Development & Visual Exploration will involve lots of sketching, mood boards, formal brainstorming. Keywords: evocative, suggest, explore, question, propose, provoke, tentative, non-comital. This phase will conclude with 3 solid concepts and a presentation.

Phase 3: Project Development will involve lots of prototyping of the final concept. Keywords: Didactic, describe, refine, answer, test resolve, specific, depiction. This phase will conclude with a very mature product and presentation.

Phase 4: Refinement and Completion will involve lots of refinement. Not to be underestimated if you follow the 80/20 rule. Concludes with a final presentation.

Capturing, Clarifying, Organizing...

First capture all simple actionable items using Things. Add context information like "At Computer" "Home" "Errand". I wonder how long I can keep up using GTD??

Next, capture all project schedule information using OmniOutliner. Use hierarchy to organize by phase. Finally, add some column information for due dates and keywords.

We need tools. Lots of tools.

Well, I don't need a TON of tools, but here are a few interesting ones I'm currently using,

Things: a Task Management application that allows you to make to do lists with contextual information. This little app can be used in conjunction with the Getting Things Done (GTD) method made popular by David Allen.

OmniOutliner: A useful little Notepad on Steroids. It's really easy to use and allows you to make notes with hierarchy. It's nimble as a simple text editor with some spreadsheet-like functionality. Useful for creating simple project plans or simply for making notes.

Picassa: Free photo album app from Google. It has a very handy Blogger Upload button.

iCal: A simple calendar can accept items from Things, drag and drop.

Google Calendar: Can be synced with iCal.

Apimac Timer: A general purpose timer to give myself some time limits! Free too.

Getting started

 

As always, the first post is the toughest but it's time to get down to business, right Mr. C?

It's time to strategize, gather some tools, lay down some foundations, and organize the vast amount of information that Tak posted on his blog.  I'm pretty excited about this project, even though I do not know my thesis topic yet!